


I Am Not A Damsel In Distress (and I have been fighting the good fight) - The Ani DiFranco Remix

by elrhiarhodan



Category: White Collar
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-30
Updated: 2011-03-30
Packaged: 2017-10-17 09:49:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/175546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elrhiarhodan/pseuds/elrhiarhodan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four Things Charlie Taught Diana</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Am Not A Damsel In Distress (and I have been fighting the good fight) - The Ani DiFranco Remix

**Author's Note:**

  * For [livrelibre](https://archiveofourown.org/users/livrelibre/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Four Things About Diana Berrigan](https://archiveofourown.org/works/172423) by [livrelibre](https://archiveofourown.org/users/livrelibre/pseuds/livrelibre). 



__  
**Prologue**   


It’s a cold winter day in New York and she’s getting ready for her wedding. Her bride is in the next suite, surrounded by friends and family. There was a little last minute uproar this morning - their wedding license had a misspelling - her name was listed as Diana B _ **a**_ rrigan, not B _ **e**_ rrigan.

Diana shoos everyone out of her suite. She needs a few minutes alone. She needs to see someone.

There’s a small suitcase, packed with essentials: her makeup, a change of underwear (because she really plans on having some private time with her new bride), extra ammo for her gun - even though it’s her wedding, she’s not going unarmed for the entire day, anywhere (and besides, Christie gets a little turned on by the smell of gun oil), the printed copy of her vows (which she’s memorized, but it’s always good to have a backup), and a framed photograph.

It’s the photo that she wants. It was taken on a bright Sunday morning, late in June – almost ten years ago. It is her high school graduation; she’s wearing a cap and gown – the red and white tassel is falling in her face and the camera catches the moment when she’s trying to blow it away. She’s cheek to cheek with the person who matters most to her that day – Charlie, her bodyguard.

She loves her parents. And they love her, wholly and unconditionally.

Her elegant mother, the epitome of a diplomat’s wife, doesn’t blink when she comes out of the closet (not that she was ever really _in_ the closet) during her junior year in college. She had looks at her with large grave eyes and said, “I still want grandchildren. Eventually.”

Her father, who had hoped she’d follow in his footsteps, didn’t get angry when she told him that she wasn’t going to work for the State Department because her application to the FBI Academy had been accepted. He understands. More than anything else, he understands.

But Charlie – for fifteen years, he was her bodyguard and she loved him more than anyone in the world. While the other kids at the schools she attended had minders and protective details, none of them had a bond like she had with Charlie. Charlie taught her things – because for him, being a bodyguard meant more than just protecting the physical shell of his charge. It meant helping her grow into a person who could live unafraid in a very dangerous world.

Diana runs her fingers against the glass that protects the photo, touching the big nose (broken in one too many fights), the sharp cheekbones and tiny mole at the inside edge of his right eyebrow and remembers what he taught her.

 

__  
**One - Just Because There Are Quantum Possibilities, Doesn’t Mean That Your Life Will Be Any Different**   


Diana’s almost thirteen and it’s another new school in another city where no one speaks the any of languages she knows and all she wants to do is stay home, in bed, hiding from the world. It’s Monday and she has braces and a big zit on her chin and everyone’s going to laugh at her.

She pulls the covers over her head and keeps very still.

“Diana.”

It’s Charlie, and he’s not asking if she’s there, or even if she’s awake. He knows she is, and that she’s been up for a half-hour. She keeps playing possum, but she knows he won’t go away.

She doesn’t move as she hears him moving around in her bedroom. Her closet opens and something gets taken out and hung on the door. Probably her uniform. It’s really ugly – they always are.

She scrunches up tight as Charlie sits on the bed and pulls the covers away.

“I don’t want to go.” She whining and she doesn’t care.

“Okay.”

Diana’s shocked. She expected a battle. “Okay?”

“Yeah – okay. You don’t want to go to school, you don’t have to. Ever.”

She looks at him, suspicious. “This is some kind of reverse psychology, right? You tell me I don’t have to do anything and that’s supposed to make me want to do it anyway.”

Charlie smiles. “Sort of. Is it working?”

“No – I still don’t want to go to school.” But she smiles at him.

“Diana – why don’t you want to go? Yesterday you were excited.”

“No I wasn’t. I don’t get excited by new schools anymore.”

Charlie sighs. “Thirteen and jaded already.”

She glares at him. “You try going to a new school every two years, Charlie. Do you know how hard it is to make friends? Everyone’s got their cliques and no one gets excited by the new girl anymore. I’ve got braces and a huge zit and I’m going to spend the semester sitting by myself during lunch and getting picked last for sports.”

“Your life is so hard, Diana Berrigan. You live in a mansion, you’ve got servants to cook and clean for you, you are _supposed_ to be going to the best school in the city – in a chauffer driven limo. I weep rivers of tears for the tragedy of your life.”

She sits up, angry now. “Yeah – I may be just a spoiled brat, a diplomat’s kid – but I can’t go out of the house without my bodyguard because I could be kidnapped and tortured or worse because my father makes speeches that make mean people very angry, and that limo has 3-inch steel plating and bullet proof windows. My life isn’t such a bed of roses.”

Charlie concedes the point, but scores one of his own. “You’d have the same problems if you lived with your grandmother and went to school back in Philadelphia.” And then another one. “You’d also have braces and a few zits, too. Maybe a lot of them – and the kids would call you ‘pizza-face’.”

“But I’d have friends.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe you’re such a dork that no one would want to be friends with you. Maybe your breath smells and you forget to bathe. And you’ll still be eating lunch by yourself and getting picked last for kickball.”

“You’re mean.” Diana pouts.

“No, I’m just telling you like it is.”

“I don’t get it.”

“There are no guarantees in life, Princess. Just because you’re here in Amsterdam and you’re starting a new school doesn’t mean that if you weren’t here and you weren’t starting a new school that your life would be perfect.”

“I hate sneaky lessons like that, Charlie.”

His eyebrows lift, a parody of confusion. “Lessons? What lessons. I’m a bodyguard, not a teacher.” He gets up and stands over Diana. “I spoke with your mother – she’s okay with you skipping today, as long as you get a little culture.”

Diana sighs. Her mother’s idea of _a little culture_ entails a morning at the museums, then a light lunch, then a matinee performance by some high-brow musical group. At dinner, she’ll have to give a complete recitation of what she’s seen and heard.

“It would be easier if I went to school.”

Charlie nods. “Yeah – for both of us.” He bops her on the nose with a big, blunt fingertip. “See you downstairs, Princess.”

 

__  
**Two - Needing Help Doesn’t Make You Weak, Not Asking For Help Makes You Stupid. Or Dead.**   


She’s almost fifteen years old and her father’s been posted to the United Nations. That means New York, which should mean that she doesn’t really need a bodyguard anymore. New York isn’t some strange foreign land where people kidnap diplomats’ kids. New York is safe and anonymous and practically home.

But her parents don’t see it that way. Charlie’s still with her. He takes her to school, he picks her up from school and if, by some miracle, someone actually wants to spend time with her after classes are done, Charlie’s there by her side.

She ditches him just one time when they were settling into New York. The door was opened and the City (this time with a well-earned capital “C”) beckons. Diana makes it as far as The Museum of Natural History and the dog park adjacent to it. She stares at the dozens of big and little dogs romping in the gated pen, wishing like she was twelve years old again that she could have a puppy. That train of thought stops when she feels Charlie at her back.

“Do that again, Princess, and you won’t sit for a week.”

Diana says nothing and keeps staring at the dogs.

“Let’s go home.”

She finally turns around and looks at him. He’s got his sunglasses on, but Diana can tell that he’s disappointed and angry at her. She can also tell that he was worried. He’s wearing the shoulder holster and a back-up piece (there’s a bulge on his right ankle). He usually isn’t so obvious about carrying.

She vows right then and there that she is going to learn how to protect herself. Not that she doesn’t love Charlie and she really doesn’t mind that he’s a fixture in her life where ever she has to go. But she’s fifteen and it’s time she learned how to handle a gun.

Her mother has a gun, and so does her father. Actually, they have several, even though her parents don’t carry on a regular basis. And of course they each have their own security details, but neither of them subscribes to an ignorance is bliss approach to life. They are licensed to carry and Diana knows that whenever possible, they will go target shooting, just to keep in practice.

Diana never asks to go with them, and she never asks to go without them. She supposes that if she asks them – they’ll say yes. And then turn the whole matter over to Charlie, who’ll put it off and shove it aside until she forgets about it altogether. Charlie doesn’t like the idea of civilians carrying guns. He even doesn’t like that her parents have guns in the home.

So – it’s going to be up to her to do this. On her own. It can’t be _that hard_.

Thursday nights are Charlie’s nights off. It’s been that way for years. One of her parents’ bodyguards (they chose to keep them, even though this is New York, and there hasn’t been an incident with a diplomat in a decade) sits on her. Or at least, keeps an eye out when they are home alone in the big apartment off of Columbus Avenue.

It doesn’t take much to get into the gun safe – she knows all of her mother’s codes and passwords. There are a bunch of different handguns, but only one of them isn’t fitted out with a trigger lock. It’s big and black and weighs a lot less than she thought it would. It looks very similar to the one that Charlie carries, which makes her feel kind of funny. Like her bodyguard is watching her.

There’s a cartridge next to the gun and they looked like they like they belong together, so she takes that, too, before closing the safe and putting everything back the way it’s supposed to be.

She waves at Michael as she goes back to her bedroom – he’s sitting in the den with the TV on low, reading a Tom Clancy novel. Diana knows not to act like she’s doing something wrong. She goes back to her bedroom, puts the gun and the cartridge on her bed and looks at them.

_Now what?_

There’s a safety – that should be on? But what does it look like. She picks up the gun and examines it, pointing it at her face.

She’s so intent on the gun that she doesn’t hear the light tap before her door opens.

“Princess?”

Startled, Diana drops the gun, which clatters against the cartridge. She grabs a pillow to cover them up. But it’s too late – she’s busted.

For the first time in the dozen years that she’s known Charlie, he curses in her presence.

“What the FUCK are you doing, Diana Berrigan?”

Before she can answer, he storms in, pulls the pillow away and sees the pistol on her bed.

He grabs it, ejects the cartridge and the chambered round, before shoving the pistol into his waistband.

“Don’t make me repeat myself. What are you doing with your father’s Glock?”

She tilts her chin up. “How do you know it’s my father’s?”

“Don’t play semantics with me, young lady. What are you doing with a gun, a loaded gun with the safety off?”

It’s been a long time since she’s been able to lie to Charlie. “I wanted to learn how to shoot.”

Charlie scrubs a hand over his face. “Why? Why would a pretty, teenage girl want to play with guns.”

She feels like she’s been slapped. “Because I want to be able to protect myself. I’m not a princess in a tower.”

Charlie pulls out her desk chair and drops into it, weary. “That’s my job. You want to put me out of work?”

“No –I should know how to use a gun. I should be able to keep myself safe.”

He looks at her, eyes filled with disappointment, and Diana wants to cry.

Charlie shakes his head. “Knowing how to use a gun won’t keep you safe. It will make you cocky and stupid and overconfident. And this is New York City – you are under eighteen and you can’t legally carry a handgun, diplomat’s daughter or not.”

“I don’t like feeling helpless.”

They stare at each other, and Diana isn’t willing to back down.

Charlie finally nods. “I can accept that…but guns aren’t the answer. They never are. You want to protect yourself; you’re going to learn how. You’re going to learn with your hands and your feet and your body. And when I’m satisfied – and only then, will I let you pick up a gun and learn how to shoot.”

Diana blinks. She hadn’t thought about martial arts. And it makes a lot more sense. She smiles at Charlie. “When can we start?”

He ruefully shakes his head at her enthusiasm. “I’ll have to talk with your parents, but if they say yes – I have a friend with a dojo nearby. We can train there.”

Charlie gets up and is about to leave, when something occurs to Diana.

“How come you’re home so early? You never come in on your nights off.”

He sighs, and gives her a small, sad smile. “That’s for me to know and you to wonder about. Now, get to sleep, Princess. Tomorrow’s a school day.”

Years later, when she is Peter Burke’s probie and he tells her about his gut, his _almost_ infallible gut, she finally understands why Charlie knew to come back that night.

 

__  
**Three - You Can Lie To Everyone and Get Away With It, But When You Lie To Yourself, You Can’t Outrun the Consequences**   


At sixteen, Diana is tall, model-gorgeous and finally allowed to date, which seems strange because she’s known how to field strip a handgun for six months now. She’s a junior at the United Nations International High School and if she’s not popular or part of the “in-crowd,” she’s not a pariah either. She’s got a few good friend – Annika, a fellow junior who she had first met at school in Amsterdam, and Yoshie, a senior who shares her interests in French literature and kendo and the _Diaries of Anais Nin_. Both girls are diplomats’ children too, and have their own bodyguards, so Charlie never stands out like a sore thumb when they are out and about.

Of course there are boys floating around Diana. Lots of them – Timothy and Stephan and Anders and Tariq and Devlin. But none of them ever make it past the first date. Annika teases and calls her a flirt, but Yoshie just looks at her with a small, happy smile and Diana barely smiles back. Like those smiles have to be kept secret.

Until she’s introduced to a freshman from Columbia named Brad Shriver. He’s related to _those Shrivers_ and of course he’s very handsome in a clean, preppy sort of way. He’s a journalism major and just the type of young man her mother has been hoping she’ll date.

The problem is that Diana hates going out with him. Their first date is fine. The second date is okay, too. So is their third and fourth – they go out clubbing with friends of his. On their fifth date, he finally makes his moves on her in the back of the limo. Maybe it was all of the restraint he’s shown during their first four dates, but suddenly Brad is like an octopus, hands all over Diana. Up her skirt, down the front of her dress, his tongue is like a wet slug in her ear.

And she doesn’t like any of it. She asks him to stop once. He says, “Come on, baby – don’t be so uptight.” She asks him twice and he tries to get her to touch his dick.

She doesn’t shriek or call for help. She just rams the palm of her hand against his nose.

Charlie doesn’t have to do anything except pull over and hold Brad’s head back until his nose stops bleeding.

He pushes the kid into a cab with a few sharp words about “No meaning NO” and opens the front passenger door for Diana. She climbs in and waits for Charlie to get behind the wheel before she bursts into semi-hysterical laughter.

“You know, you didn’t have to break his nose.” He hands her a box of tissues and a bottle of water. She tries to wipe Brad’s blood off – her mother would get hysterical if she saw her like this.

“It isn’t easy to drop kick a guy in the back seat of a limo.”

“No, I don’t suppose it is.” Charlie pulls out into traffic. “Want to go for ice cream?”

“What am I, twelve?” But Diana grins. According to Charlie, a dish of ice cream can fix just about anything.

They end up at an ice cream parlor in the East Village, and Diana is perched on a stool furthest from the door and in Charlie’s line of sight. They share a large Rocky Road sundae with extra hot fudge.

“So – when are you going to stop lying to yourself, Princess?”

“When are you going to stop calling me ‘Princess’?” She is getting very good at deflecting.

Charlie just raises an eyebrow at her.

“What gives…what are you talking about?”

“You, Princess. When are you going to stop pretending to be something that you’re not?”

Diana’s palms are instantly sweaty and she wipes them on her skirt. She licks her lips and then toys with the pendant on her necklace.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about…really.”

Charlie sighs. “Diana…”

She knows it’s serious when he uses her name like that.

“You don’t have to live a lie.”

“I’m only sixteen – how can I be living a lie?”

“I have eyes in my head.”

“That’s a good place to have them, Charlie.” She tries for a refuge in flippancy. It doesn’t work.

“I’ve seen you and your friend Yoshie.”

Diana’s nervous now. What has he seen?

Charlie licks off the last bit of ice cream and hot fudge from the back of his spoon and tosses it into the bowl. “I know what it’s like to live a lie, Diana.”

“Charlie?” He’s scaring her now.

“I enlisted at seventeen. I was young and stupid and the military seemed like a good alternative to drinking away my life on the reservation. I filled out the forms, signed the papers and really didn’t think about the lie I told Uncle Sam.”

Diana sits there with her hands in her lap. She knows just a little bit about her bodyguard – her best friend, the man who practically raised her. When she was a little girl – especially after her grandmother died and her parents were traveling all over the world, she would worry that Charlie would die, too. Or that he’d go away and leave her behind.

Just once, her father let it slip that Charlie’s folks had lived on a reservation in New Mexico, and that was it. She used to ask him sometimes about his family –all he ever told her was that she’s his family now and she hugged him, comforted by the knowledge that for Charlie, she’s the most important thing in his world.

But tonight seems to be a night for confessions.

“What did you lie about, Charlie?”

“There used to be a question on the enlistment form, and you were supposed to answer truthfully; whether or not you were a homosexual or if you had ever participated in any homosexual activity.”

Diana finds her voice. “That’s what you lied about? That you’re gay?”

“Yeah. For the fifteen years I served my country, I denied a very essential part of myself.”

“You’re gay.” She repeats it. This time, it isn’t a question.

“I am. I have been all my life.”

Diana’s world is rocked. It doesn’t seem to matter that Charlie likes to kiss boys. _Men_. It’s that she’s known him for almost all her life – and she’s never known this. And she’s got a million questions.

“My father knows, right?”

“And your mother. I told them before I signed on to watch over you.”

“Do you have a … boyfriend?” That seems like such a daring question.

“What do you think I’ve been doing every Thursday and every Sunday for the last twelve years? Playing pinochle?”

Diana blushes and suddenly feels very adult. “What’s his name?”

“Eddie. He’s a civil rights attorney.” Diana likes how proudly Charlie says his name.

“I’d like to meet him.”

Charlie nods. “Maybe…”

The last question crowds into Diana’s brain and tries to force its way past her lips.

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Diana – Princess, you’re not stupid.”

“You think I’m gay?”

Charlie looks at her, one eyebrow raised.

Diana thinks about Yoshie and Annika. What they’ve done together…that doesn’t make her gay, does it? It’s just been kisses and they’ve touched each other, played around. It is never serious with Annika, but with Yoshie, there are always more emotions than she really wants to think about.

But when she thinks about doing the same things with boys, with men…she gets a little sick to her stomach. It’s not fear. It’s _distaste_. It’s not what she wants.

Diana stays perched on her stool, her world set askew for the second time in a half-hour.

“My parents are going to freak. My mom is going to freak.”

Charlie frowns. “I don’t think so. Your parents have always been strong supporters of human rights.”

“But when it comes to their daughter – it’s going to be different. Right?”

“Princess – I don’t know. I don’t think you should worry about that for now. You need to find out who you really are. You need to be honest with yourself. Then you can be honest with everyone else.”

Diana remembers that conversation. It becomes a totem that she carries through all of her life.

 

__  
**Four - Love is Something Worth Dying For, But It’s Also the Most Important Thing to Live For.**   


She’s so angry. It should be raining out. The sky should be weeping. It is wrong that the day is perfect - the deep blue sky of autumn in New York, the brightly colored leaves whispering in counterpoint to the priest’s words as he reads from the funeral service in the Book of Common Prayer.

_Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and certain hope of Resurrection into the eternal life…_

She doesn’t hear the words, or the leaves or the honking of the geese as they pass overhead. Diana’s ears are still ringing from the hail of gunshots that took Charlie’s life.

They - a bunch of men in black ski masks - came out of nowhere last Saturday night and tried to grab Diana. Charlie wasn’t even on duty - he hadn’t been for three years, not since Diana started at Harvard. She had come back to New York for a long weekend and was meeting him for a drink.

The would-be kidnappers became murderers when Charlie pushed her to the ground and threw himself over her. He was shot twice, one in the chest and one in the belly, but he still managed to take out all four of the assailants. Diana kept up pressure on the chest wound, and he was laughing a little with her as they rode together in the ambulance, and she never thought he’d die.

But he did. He bled out in the ER before she gets a chance to say goodbye.

Everything has been a bit foggy since the shooting. Charlie’s friend - his partner, Eddie, made all of the arrangements. She likes Eddie - but she doesn’t think she can bear to say anything. It’s her fault that Charlie’s dead. If she hadn’t asked him to meet her, he’d have never been in the line of fire.

The gunshots are still echoing in her memory, but over them, Diana can hear the trumpeter play Taps and then the military salute. She flinches at the rifle’s retort and the echo off the slabs and pillars of marble and granite. The honor guard removes the flag and folds it. They present it to her and she’s so damn angry. She takes it, kisses a corner and gives it to Eddie.

Her life as she knows it is over now. The careful plans - she’ll finish the degree in International Relations from Harvard, and she’ll even get her Masters Degree from Georgetown, but she’s not going to docilely follow in her father’s footsteps and have a tame career in the State Department.

She’s going to apply to the FBI as soon as she can. She knows it’s going to be difficult, but as Charlie says - as Charlie _used to say_ , nothing easy was worth having. It’s so much better to work for it.

She’s not going to say anything to her parents - not until her application is accepted – even though that’s another three years down the road. Her father would pull strings, and her mother would have a stroke. She didn’t raise Diana to be a cop. She still has to tell her mother that she is a dyke. A lesbian.

But not now...not when her mother can’t bear to let her out of her sight and her father wants to have her move back to New York and was already interviewing new bodyguards for her.

It doesn’t matter that the group who tried to kidnap her was trying to keep her father from giving a policy speech at the U.N. - a speech he made on Monday, regardless of the weekend’s trauma. Everyone thinks it is a one shot deal, and that Diana’s life is no longer at risk.

Diana doesn’t really care. She is numb to the possibilities, but she needs to stay focused.

Two days after the funeral she’s back in Cambridge. No one really knows what happened...a few of her friends, maybe. She stays focused and keeps up her grades. There’s no time for girlfriends, but time enough for casual sex. She picks up girls like she’s buying milk and bread, and goes through them just as quickly.

There’s maybe a hint of something that could be something special with Tashiko, but maybe it’s more like nostalgia for those halcyon days with Yoshie. They look a little alike - Tashiko is taller, slimmer, but she’s got the same shy smile. Diana tries to get her to read Anais Nin, but when she recites passages from _Little Birds_ to her, Tashiko looks at her like she’s some sort of pervert and runs out.

Maybe she is a pervert.

She goes home for Spring Break and tells her mother that she’s gay. She’s braced for the storm that never comes. Her mother strokes her hair and kisses her on the forehead and tells her that she’s known for a long time. Diana tries to be angry - is this the story of her life? Everyone knows that she’s a dyke?

Her mother, bless her, tries to fix her up with another lesbian - the youngest daughter of some Scandinavian ambassador. Because that is what mothers do, isn’t it?

The date’s not an unmitigated disaster. Diana gets them a hotel room and the girl has a very talented tongue - even if it only speaks Swedish. Or Norwegian. Or Danish.

She graduates from Harvard. With honors, of course. She’s got a choice to make. It’s two years before she’s eligible to apply to the FBI academy - she’s 21 now and the youngest they’ll take is 23. Her father’s pushing her towards Georgetown - he still thinks she wants to be a diplomat like him. Her mother would like her to take a year off - relax, maybe meet a nice girl and settle down and make some babies.

She goes to Georgetown.

It’s really not that bad. D.C. isn't like New York, and it’s not like Boston. It’s both more uptight and more experimental and Diana finds herself unwinding...just a little.

She applies to the Academy and she’s certain her father knows - after all, there are very extensive background checks. The interviews are rough - they ask her all sorts of questions about why she wants to be an agent. She worries that her answers make her seem like a woman on a quest for vengeance. But they are satisfied, and she’s admitted for the first class that starts after she turns twenty-three.

The Academy is difficult - five months of physical and mental agony. Not insurmountable or unendurable, but she’s not making many friends. Word gets around that her father is a diplomat, so that must mean that daddy pulled strings for her admission and everyone seems to be taking bets on when she bails out. But she doesn’t - she’s top of her class academically and she’s in the upper third of all trainees on the physical requirements.

About half-way through the program, the trainees get liberty for the weekend. Like most of them, she catches a ride into D.C. and then takes a cab to her old stomping grounds in Georgetown. It’s only been a few months, but it feels like a lifetime. She stops for lunch at a pizzeria - a student hangout. It’s noisy and crowded, but the slice is delicious - greasy and hot and like nothing she should be eating. Diana walks and eats, finally stopping in front of a tattoo parlor she’s passed a hundred times. She had never thought about getting a tat - it seems a rather foolish rebellion, because she can’t think of what she’d have tattooed on her body. A memorial to Charlie - that would be good, but it shouldn’t be obvious.

Then she spots a design - a series of interlinked boxes.

In her eyes, it’s a chain, it’s simple and it says everything she wants to say about herself and her life. The tattoo guy tries to talk her into having it wrap around her bicep, but that’s too much. She wants just a few links, to symbolize the line that will never be broken. That can never be crossed.

Her instructors give her hell for it - a healing tat will interfere with her physical training. She doesn’t let it, not even when the hand-to-hand combat instructor digs his fingers into it. She screams in anger, breaks his hold and then goes for his nose.

No one calls her a prissy, diplomat’s brat anymore.

Like Harvard, like Georgetown, she graduates at the top of her Academy class. Her life is good, and it has been for a while. Three years back in New York, working her ass off for Peter Burke. She’s happy, sometimes happier than she thinks she’s got the right to be.

Her probationary period’s over and although she’s going to be sad about leaving Peter and his team (and she’s very curious about how he’s going to manage the very slippery Neal Caffrey for the next four years), she’s excited to be moving back to Washington. Her family’s relocated with her father’s new posting in D.C., and she’s got friends there from her Georgetown days.

Lately, Diana’s been thinking about Charlie. It’s been nearly seven years since he was killed. She thinks about everything he tried to teach her - but there seems to be one lesson that’s missing. She wonders about calling on Eddie before she leaves New York, but time runs short, or maybe she’s a bit of a coward, and she’s settled in D.C. before she realizes that she never called him.

Charlie continues to haunt her. And she thinks about the fifteen years he spent denying who he was. Diana counts herself lucky - she’s a lesbian and she’s proud of it. Her parents love her, her bosses don’t care who she sleeps with (or at least Peter didn’t - she hasn't come out to the people at her new posting), and she’s never going to have to deny who and what she is.

But something is missing.

Three weeks after she moves back, she’s out with a bunch of Georgetown friends and they drag her to this poetry thing. A “slam” they call it - where people get up and recite their poems and have them judged by an audience panel.

Diana’s bored. She’d been cultured with the best of them and by the best of them. Sitting in a darkened bar, like some anachronistic beatnik while people get up and read their awful, amateurish efforts is not her idea of a good time.

A tall woman, hair in dreads down to her waist, her hands clenched into taut fists, stands alone in the single spotlight. Unlike the others, she recites from memory.

__  
**“Love. That is the gift.**   


__  
**He dies for your love, but he wants you to live.**   


__  
**Fulfilled and happy.**   


__  
**That is his gift to you.**   


__  
**Love.”**   


Diana forgets to breathe. That’s the missing lesson - that’s what Charlie was trying to teach her all along. Love - that is the most important thing of all.

 

__  
**Epilogue**   


There’s a knock on the door. It’s her mother. She comes in and fusses a bit with Diana’s veil.

“There’s a full house and your father’s waiting for you. And so is your bride.”

Diana smiles. “Mom - can you take this with you? He should be there, too.” She hands her the picture of Charlie.

Her mother takes the picture in one hand and lays the other against her daughter’s heart. “I think he already is.”

  
_FIN_

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd by my lovely trio of flying buttresses: Coffeethyme4me, Rabidchild67 and Jrosemary. They made this a much better story than it was! You are the very best, ladies!!!!!


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